MOSES Organic Farming Podcast

By MOSES

Dive into the most relevant topics of sustainable and organic farming through interviews with farmers and ag professionals, as well as audio from MOSES Conference workshops and field days. Organic Specialist Chuck Anderas hosts this podcast. Sponsored by Gempler's.

Where to listen

You can’t control the price of milk, but you can control how much it costs you to produce it. Dr. Jon Winsten outlines three key metrics to look at when considering a dairy farm’s financial viability: feed efficiency, labor efficiency, and capital efficiency.
This is part 1 of 3 grazing training installments this month. In two weeks, part 2 will be a podcast episode with organic dairy graziers Thelma Heidel-Baker and Ricky Baker. Part 3 will be a virtual field day on June 24th with Thelma, Ricky, and Jon where we’ll talk about the economics of grazing as well as the production and conservation aspects.
Learn more about the Pasture Project.
Learn about equity efforts for communities of color in the food system in this Civil Eats story.
Join Jon and MOSES for a virtual field day June 24 at Bossie Cow Farm in Wisconsin.

This is part 2 on cooperatives with Kelly Maynard from the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives. In part 1, we talked about the importance of group work, goals of co-ops, and questions to ask before getting started. This week, we get into the role of feasibility studies, grants and loans to get started, what kinds of businesses are best suited for coops, and more on the principles that cooperative businesses can teach us.

Kelly Maynard is a Cooperative Development Specialist at the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives. Kelly spoke at the 2020 MOSES Organic Farming Conference about how to start a cooperative. We share clips from her workshop presentation and connect with Kelly to dig a little deeper into the world of cooperatives. Look for Part 2 next week.
Visit the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives.
Free webinars on cooperative governance

COVID-19 is stressing the food system in unprecedented ways. Farmers and local food advocates have a unique opportunity to build new and more just food systems. Today’s guest is Dan Cornelius. Dan is a farmer, a member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, and is the Intertribal Agriculture Council’s Technical Assistance Specialist for the Great Lakes Region. Dan shares his thoughts on food systems, the role seeds play in resilience and food sovereignty, cooperatives, and some examples from work different Tribes have been doing that pre-date the pandemic.

Mimo Davis and Miranda Duschack are flower farmers in St. Louis. Most of their 10,000 followers on Instagram are local customers. (Look for @urbanbuds.) They’ve invested a lot in learning how to do social media well. Their insights are even more important now that in-person connections at farmers markets and on our farms have been put on pause. Plus, they are funny people!

Farmers Katie Bishop and Rebecca Henderson, guests on Episode 1: Market Farming in a Pandemic, return for this chat to answer farmers' questions about online platforms for selling produce, managing inventory, handling CSA demand, connecting with customers, worker safety, and aggregating product with other farms.
UPDATE: In this episode, Rebecca Henderson mentions that they were working to start a REKO Market in their area. It is now launched, and you can learn more about it here: https://www.rekomarket.com/

Why are conventional dairy farmers dumping milk? How are the closures of the meat processing plants impacting livestock farmers? Chuck checks in with Bobbi Wilson from Wisconsin Farmers Union and organic dairy farmer Kevin Mahalko to talk about the issues and how to build more resilient dairy and livestock farms.

Join us for Zoom meetings to chat with our guests about the topics featured in our podcast episodes.
UPDATE: May 21, 2020
Our Post-Podcast Farmer Chats are on hiatus for the rest of the farming season.

Our friends at Farm Commons have a great podcast series to help farmers manage legal issues that could arise during the pandemic. We're posting a crossover episode here to introduce our audience to Farm Commons' resources. In this episode, they discuss key legal considerations of sick leave policies for farms that may have sick employees and/or employees with sick family members/kids at home because school is canceled.

How does the coronavirus impact produce safety? How much do you have to worry about surfaces? How do you keep yourself, your workers, and your customers safe?
The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a lot of questions for market farmers. Produce safety expert Annalisa Hultberg from the University of Minnesota Extension has science-based answers to help you understand best practices for flattening the curve and feeding your community at the same time. MOSES Organic Specialist and organic fruit farmer Rachel Henderson provides a farmer’s take.
As promised in this episode, here's a link to the Farm Commons webinar on Unemployment Insurance Benefits for Farmers/Ranchers Affected by COVID-19.

With the incredible uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people are experiencing mental health problems for the first time, and the added stress is worsening many peoples’ underlying mental health conditions. The American Psychiatric Association recently found that over a third of Americans think the coronavirus pandemic is seriously affecting their psychological health.
For this episode, Chuck has candid conversations with Emily Krekelberg, head of Minnesota Extension’s Rural Stress Task Force, and farmer and farm advocate Rick Adamski of Seymour, Wisconsin. They have personal experience with mental health issues and draw from those experiences to help others. These conversations can help you recognize mental health issues in yourself or others and give you suggestions on how to address them.
For immediate help:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255
Farm Aid Crisis Hotline: 1-800-FARM-AID
Minnesota Farm & Rural Helpline: 833-600-2670 x 1

How is the coronavirus affecting organic grain farmers? What effect might the pandemic have on commodity prices? What should organic farmers be considering as they think about this year? Listen in on conversations with economist Ryan Koory of Mercaris and organic farmers Carmen Fernholz and Luke Peterson. Turns out, the solutions are the tried-and-true principles of organic and sustainable farming—diversify your crops and markets and join forces with other farmers.

COVID-19 has forced us all to make big changes fast. This is especially true for market farmers. In our first episode, we talk to vegetable growers Katie Bishop and Rebecca Henderson on how they’ve adjusted so far, as well as online marketing expert Janelle Maiocco on how to quickly get started in online sales.